Commander Ken Cameron, Pilot Jim Halsell and Mission Specialists
Chris Hadfield, Jerry Ross and Bill McArthur are conducting the final
checks of the shuttle's steering systems this morning and watching
Florida weather, which is forecast to be favorable. Today's first
landing opportunity begins with a deorbit burn at 9:58 a.m. JSC time
and concludes with landing at 11:02 a.m. The second opportunity
involves a deorbit burn at 11:33 a.m. and landing at 12:37 p.m.

Although weather is expected to be good at Edwards Air Force Base in
California, landing support teams have not been activated there. If
landing does not occur at KSC today, there are opportunities at both
sites Tuesday.

Because the astronauts awakened about 12:30 a.m. today and will land
around midday, they are expected to remain in Florida overnight. A
welcome home ceremony is being planned for 11 a.m. Tuesday at
Ellington Field's Hangar 990.

Atlantis' return to Earth follows a successful docking with Mir and
delivery of the Russian Docking Module that now becomes a permanent
docking port for future Phase 1 missions to the space station. The
STS-74 crew also participated in a number of joint medical and
environmental investigations with the Mir crew -- Commander Yuri
Gidzenko, Flight Engineer Sergei Avdeyev and Cosmonaut Researcher
Thomas Reiter of Germany. Atlantis delivered water, supplies and
equipment--including two new solar arrays--to Mir and is returning
with U.S., Russian and ESA experiment equipment and samples.

The astronauts of the second shuttle-Mir docking flight also studied
the Earth's thermosphere, ionosphere and mesosphere with the GPP
experiment, and evaluated Mir's solar array structures remotely
through three Photogrammetric Appendage Structural Dynamics Experiment
canisters in the payload bay.